Kyle McDonald

Kyle McDonald works with sounds and codes, exploring translation, contextualization, and similarity. With a background in philosophy and computer science, he strives to integrate intricate processes and structures with accessible, playful realizations that often have a do-it-yourself, open-source aesthetic. Kyle is a regular contributor to open-source arts-engineering initiatives such as OpenFrameworks, having developed a number of extensions which provide connectivity to powerful image processing and computer vision libraries. For the past few years, Kyle has applied these techniques to problems in 3D scene capture, first using structured light techniques, and later with the Microsoft Kinect sensor. Kyle’s camera-based artworks range from the hyper-formal to the tactical and interrogative. He is currently wrapping up his work from his Guest Researcher residency at the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media, Japan.

For the past few decades researchers have been slaving away on advanced mathematics and computer science to help computers see the world the way humans do. These techniques regularly find their way into interactive artwork and installations: blob detection, face tracking, foreground/background segmentation. The OpenCV library is a massive collaborative effort to implement and connect these different computer vision techniques. Programming with only OpenCV can be intimidating, while openFrameworks' ofxOpenCv only exposes a few technique from OpenCV. So this workshop will introduce a new addon for openFrameworks that makes it easier to use everything from the simplest OpenCV functions to most bleeding edge algorithms. We will cover techniques including background learning, camera calibration, optical flow, contour detection and tracking, basic face tracking and advanced expression analysis.

Experience with openFrameworks is assumed. Attendees should bring a laptop with the latest build of [openFrameworks] www.openframeworks.cc/download and an up-to-date clone of [ofxCv] github.com/kylemcdonald/ofxCv The workshop will cater to OSX, while Windows users should be running Code::Blocks. Linux users will be expected to answer everyone else's questions. (Kyle will be assisted by Golan Levin)

Session: How to Give Everything Away

This is a discussion about sharing. Sharing code and ideas, and collaborating on tools and artwork. Sharing personal information, and learning about the difference between what's public and private. It's about what you do when your girlfriend asks you to stop posting everything you type directly to Twitter. It's about what you do when the Secret Service confiscates your laptop as you're trying to learn about human computer interaction. It's about responding to thousands of emails from people you've never met, who have questions you could never imagine. This is a coming-of-age story for the internet.

McDonald caused a sensation when he revealed that his latest art project involved installing a form of custom spyware on computers in two Apple stores in New York, automatically sending him images of people peering into the screens that he then posted on a Tumblr blog, titled "People Staring at Computers." Secret service agents raided McDonald's home, confiscating his laptops, several flash drives, and an iPod. - artinfo.com